SANParks.org Forums

It rarely happens in the daytime that I come across spam. I do however sometimes encounter it in the very early mornings. I am just curious as to how much spam is removed before it even reaches us.

This morning, for the first time I saw spam that sent shivers down my spine. It looked as though it might be aimed at peadophiles. Is there any proceedure if something of this nature hits the screen? In this case I would have really loved it to have been reported to some crime authority.

I also know that a lot of spam carries viruses and is often attached to invitations to porn sites. I was rather disturbed this morning though.

There were three different spammers on this morning - I must say that the child pornography one was really disturbing.

Edit - a 4th spammer just posted as well

Apologies that you had to see it. We try to not let that happen.

Yip, I cleaned up a minute ago and in no time there were more.

Billy, there was another one straight after posting.

I usually just ignore the "sales" ones. I report it, but it means nothing to me. The occasional porn that seems to get through... well, it happens.. but advertising porn with children

Jen, the mods can't be there all the time. I am in no way seeing the mods as responsible for this kind of filth getting through. I was just very, very disturbed that this kind of stuff is around. I know its around, but it was disturbing.

Thanks for cleaning Jen Think you need to set your alarm clock earlier so you can clean the forum before we get onto it

I know what you mean MM, it's really upsetting to say the least. Just shows you how sick the world is, hey?

Billy!
Yip, I am up early but I also have to do a bit of work. The sort which pays for my internet connection.

to those behind the scenes.

and that I'll second...........

MM there are predominantly three kinds of SPAM.

The first is usually to advertise. The usual "come buy this product".
Secondly is the "shock spam". Simply meant to shock people and be a nuisance. This is mostly done by kids that have to much time on their hands and they are not really interested in money etc. Its all for the "fame" of seeing how many sites they can attack.

The 3rd and probably the most dangerous is the ones that try to get people to a site to either "Phish" for information such as credit cards or pin numbers and passwords or to have you join a site and a trojan virus be placed in your PC.

You will be surprised how many sites actually do that. For a long time 5FM site was flaged as dangerous by Google as it contained an "imbedded frames" trojan that collected information from people.

Once again the best possible way to stop this is to have an UP TO DATE Antivirus system.

There are three top performers which all do the basic essentials very well:

NOD32 from ESET
Panda Anti Virus
Symantec AntiVirus (Be careful of the internet security application. If you don't know how it works it can give headaches.)

But for the interests of your own safety and your bank account safety make sure you have a proper updated anti virus. It shouldn't cost you more than R250 a year to get a good one.

Thanks for that information, Baffers.

Ohh yes and I forgot to add.

The best way to combat spam on a forum like this is kicka$$ mods. There is very little one can do if the forum allows members to post

There are some measures one can do like install a filter that will block people from posting more than one post every 45 seconds or so. I wonder if this forum has that? ie it will block "new users" from answering 2 forums in 45 seconds. That can limit the spam.

It is not abnormal for us to ban 20 spammers a day. Last Thursday I actually counted, and it was 23.
They are usually from the "normal" countries associated with spam, like the Ukraine, India, China, Philippines, Pakistan and USA. Large swathes of IP's in those countries have been blocked, but they always have more.

Just hit the red exclamation mark on the posts that do make it through and ignore them.

Yes you are blocked to make two posting one after the other.........you get a message to say that you are not allowed to make a posting so shortly after the other..........

The red exclamation mark is a life saver
Luckily for us Jen is usually a early bird and do kill the spammers before forum life starts again for most members

Well done Mods for protecting us.